More Medicine for Dulles South

The Route 50 corridor will soon be getting an addition to its growing number of medical facilities. Thursday, Hospital Corporation (HCA) of Virginia announced its intent to develop a new medical campus on 49 acres of land along the roadway.

"The board was concerned that more of the county get health-care services," Megan Descutner, spokesperson for the corporation, said. "We tried to listen to what the board has said and decided that this was the next step."

The facility will be located at the intersection of Route 50 and Gum Spring Road, adjacent to Glascock Field, an airplane landing strip. The land, which HCA closed on on Dec. 1, 2006, for $19 million, is undeveloped and zoned for the type of outpatient medical facilities that HCA plans to build. If HCA wants to expand the campus in the future to include a hospital, or inpatient facilties, it would have to submit a special exception application to the county.

The corporation plans on opening the facility with outpatient services, but Descutner said, HCA is going to design its services around the needs of the community so it won't be just another "cookie cutter" medical facility.

"We are doing a need assessment of what is the best thing to offer the residents," she said. "Eventually, when the population supports the need for a hospital then we will proceed with that."

The growing population in Loudoun, particularly in the Dulles South area was the motivation behind the new medical campus, but HCA is still moving forward with its other Loudoun project, the Broadlands Regional Medical Center in Ashburn.

"Loudoun is significantly underserved when it comes to hospital services and Ashburn is the epicenter of the county's growth and the community's needs," Margaret Lewis, president of HCA's Capital Division, said.

The Route 50 campus will be the seventh HCA location in Northern Virginia, joining facilities such as Reston's hospital and surgery center, Dominion Hospital in Falls Church and the Broadlands hospital.